Tesla's Autopilot feature is once again put under the spotlight after a Tesla engineer admitted to a staged demonstration. The statement served as a testimony to a trial that accused the autopilot feature of causing a vehicular accident.
Not as Automated as Advertised
The statement held weight considering it came from an autopilot engineer from the very same automaker that was being accused. Ashok Elluswamy, the engineer who gave the testimony, said that the video demonstrating Tesla's autopilot in 2016 wasn't entirely accurate.
The video which is still up on Tesla's website shows a car with the autopilot feature driving by itself. Upon arrival at its destination, the passenger got off the car and parked parallel to other cars in the lot.
The video indicates that the driver is only there for legal reasons, emphasizing that the vehicle is doing all the work. However, Tesla employees revealed that the route was already mapped and that the car even crashed as they were filming, as mentioned in Gizmodo.
Elluswamy expressed that the video was meant to accurately show what the company can build into the system, and not what it can actually do at the present. It was in response to the claims of Walter Huang's family, who said that the autopilot caused the accident that killed Huang.
The Autopilot-Related Accident
The driver, Walter Huang, died after his Tesla caught on fire back in late March 2018, which happened on the southbound US Highway 101 in Mountain View. The driver was still brought to Stanford University Medical Center, but his injuries were too severe.
According to CBS, Huang lost control of the car, which was a Tesla Model X. It steered left which caused the collision with the concrete barriers between the two roads. This resulted in the vehicle catching on fire, followed by being hit again by a white Mazda.
It was after a year that Huang's family decided to sue Tesla, claiming that the autopilot system malfunctioned which caused the fatal crash. The lawsuit also claims that the car did not have safety features like emergency brakes.
A Tesla spokesperson responded by saying that all tesla cars had automatic emergency braking. The automaker also claimed that the car gave the victim an audible alert as well as visual alerts while he was driving.
They claimed that his hands were not on the wheel that the car detected, which was six seconds before the crash occurred. Tesla added that Huang had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the barrier, but he didn't take action.
The National Transportation Safety Board investigated the crash and said that it was going 65 miles per hour until it steered toward the concrete. After reviewing the data, they also claimed that the car accelerated to 70.8 miles an hour in three seconds and did not brake.
According to Ars Technica, the car has been having the same glitch before, wherein the car would steer by itself in the very same spot. The two previous times it happened, the driver managed to grab the wheel and take control. Documents have confirmed that this was indeed the case.
